Singing Doctors and Friendly Time Bombs

3 A.M. listening party at EnBan- photo by Nigel Staley

A Salute To Japan's Independent Record Shops
By Thomas Bey William Bailey(December 2008)

Many moons ago, I worked as a record store clerk in the Tower superstore in
Chicago. It wasn't a bad job as far as low-paying jobs went, and my fellow
clerks were a colorful potpourri of drunks, walking jazz encyclopedias, disco
divas, paranoiac/conspiratorial LSD dealers and everything in between. The
queasy, clashing red-and-yellow color scheme of the store is indelibly etched
onto my brain, as are all the routine, mechanical actions that normally
accompany such grunt work. A steady procession of local music stars and sad
has-beens chewed up by that same star system kept the monotony from
setting in, though: it's not every retail outlet in which you get to see Ray
Manzarek of the Doors beet-faced with rage (over an unannounced and, more
importantly, unattended book signing), then get to see a blasting rock band
endangering the lives of hundreds of shoppers the next day (said band was
breathing fire from the makeshift Tower music stage, the flames licking what
would have been the floorboards of tenants in the posh Lincoln Park living
quarters above us).

I thought my collected experiences here would be enough
to pad a good book or two-that is, until I first experienced the Japanese record
store scene in all its majesty. After just a few incursions into music epicenters
like Tokyo's Shinjuku area and Osaka's Ame-Mura [America Village], I realized
exactly how tame my experiences were. Sure, I'd rubbed shoulders with
sneering glitterati from all over the pop-cultural map, and even had a great
vicarious thrill when the late Wesley Willis (Chicago's noted schizophrenic
troubador and street artist) urinated on the tacky Christmas tree in the public
square in front of the store-expressing my disdain for the consumerist holiday
season better than I would have been willing to do myself. This was all fine and
good, but had I ever gone to a record store-sponsored event called "Baby's
Playroom," in which the audience and 'performers' were all infants? Or, had I
gone to an all-night marathon of singing doctors entitled "Secret Laboratory" at
this same shop? Had I gone there and had so many glasses of rice wine at the
bar that I walked out of the store with an embarrassing sack full of 7" singles
meant for enhancing aerobics sessions? The answer to all three of these
questions, even in light of my Tower misadventures, was a resounding 'NO.'

There was obviously a gap in my music-related experiences that needed filling,
and that was easily filled by a single "multi-purpose" record store, bar, and
event space called EnBan, just next to the Japan Rail train tracks in Tokyo's
lively Koenji district.

Satoru Higashiseto, a calm and personable gentleman who has worked at
Osaka's 'Time Bomb' shop since 1983, written for the popular Bananafish
magazine (and who probably attended untold thousands of concerts) also has
praise for EnBan: "Enban is a good idea," he says. "Taguchi, the owner, told me that his CD sales are better during midnight than in the daytime, because of the customers who drink a lot of sake at the bar."1

Yet EnBan is more than just an idiosyncratic combination of different elements: it
represents a more experimental attitude towards making music available,
which should, in a perfect world, go hand-in-hand with an experimental attitude
towards creating music. EnBan enjoys an almost daily series of live events-
these have involved everyone from the 'secret singing doctors' to Tokyo's
'mistress of the sine wave' Sachiko M., and even the author of this piece on
one occasion.

Yet EnBan must distinguish itself from the teeming number of
urban Japanese record stores to survive (there are at least forty of them just
southeast of EnBan, in the Shinjuku district). They do this mainly with a
communicative, and paradoxically non-consumerist philosophy. As Mr. Taguchi
states in the first issue of the audio culture magazine Nu, "even if people come
into my store with an attitude of 'What the hell is this place?' it's still great for
me."2

This attitude is shared by a small coterie of "self-taught" shop owners
with a passion for constant musical diversification, no matter how trivial or
confusing some of their musical juxtapositions might seem to the uninitiated.
Los Apson, a tiny shop off the beaten path from the throbbing bee colony known
as Shinjuku station, is like a sister shop to EnBan, synthesizing the
transcendental and the silly like few other record stores on the planet. Los
Apson boss Keiji Yamabe recalls the willful eclecticism that led him to start his
shop: "[Before Los Apson], I was working at Roppongi 'Wave'... I was
assigned to be the man in charge of U.S. indie releases. This was before stuff
like Nirvana became a hot topic and started selling like crazy. After that
happened, almost anybody could lay claim to some knowledge of 'U.S. indies',
so I decided to start an 'avant garde' corner in my store. But in addition to avant
garde, I wanted to have 'low rider' and 'Pon-Chak' music [a cheaply produced,
frenetic dance music favored by Korean taxi drivers]... I didn't think that was
possible at a major record supermarket, so I started Los Apson."3

Yamabe's shop can become difficult to navigate if there are more than just three
people inside- something not uncommon for the so-called
'select shops' in Tokyo. But whereas some people would be deterred by these
size constraints, shopkeepers like Yamabe use the restraining factors to force
a more creative approach, and to form a consistent pattern of taste-making.
Everything in Los Apson, be it uncredited, neo-Dadaist pamphlets of unknown
origin, a section of otherwise unclassifiable CD's labeled "brain damages", or
vintage magazines on Mexican pro wrestling (one of Yamabe's pet topics),
invites further curiosity: Taguchi's aforementioned "what the hell?" factor is
certainly in play here, too. The store bursts with home-mixed minidisks, eye-
popping optical art t-shirt designs, and shelves of books celebrating the more
untamed aspects of Japanese, European, and American counter-culture. Oh,
and there are plenty of proper CD releases as well. As Noriyasu Nogai, the
owner of yet another eccentric select shop, Kurara Audio Arts, says: "Los Apson
is more than just a 'place'... it has the feeling of a separate universe."4

Even more than this, Los Apson is an alternative to superstores like the Shibuya
Tower Records branch and other independent shops which tend to sell
records from only one genre. In a culture which normally favors intense
specialization, with one store for every imaginable micro-sized theme (be it
Beatles bootlegs, grindcore releases with quasi-snuff album covers, or
confectionery French chansons), EnBan and Los Apson are decidedly more
radical in their approach. Yamabe seems to relish the unconventional, talkative
customers he gets, who treat him like more of a bartender or personal fashion
advisor than a mere record store clerk. While he isn't equipped with a full bar,
as EnBan is, he states that "we don't serve alcohol... but it always feels like a
bar in here."5

Los Apson ally Kurara Audio Arts is another calculated attack on specialization.
Unlike the rampant freakout psychedelicism of Los Apson, Nogai's shop leans
more towards traditional avant-gardism and recorded objets d'art, such as Die
Tödliche Doris' famed box of 2" records (Chöre & Soli) intended for play in the
voicebox of a talking doll. A special interest in art brut complements the well-
arranged avant garde shelves of Kurara, with LP's by 'children's noise' acts
such as Dragibus being among Nogai's personal favorites. A good selection of
heavyweight art books, posters and films rounds out the selection. Not only
does Kurara avoid the strict genre-based approach of other independent
shops, but it also (according to Nogai) avoids being part of the music fans'
"boys club":

"The type of customers here has really changed," Nogai tells the Japanese
webzine Web-Across. "Up until now, we've had mostly artistes and people who
make music themselves. But, recently, it wouldn't be unusual for a younger
schoolgirl to come here by herself."6

As you might expect, the 'socialization factor' in Japanese select record shops
is inversely proportional to their miniscule size. As the stores get smaller, the
relationship with the shopkeepers becomes more personal and enduring. If
you go to a larger Japanese chain store such as Disc Union, you will
immediately notice the spectacle of determined vinyl-hunters flipping their way
through record racks at an astonishing, inhuman speed that accompanies their
thorough knowledge of their chosen musical genres. Then they will disappear
from the store just as quickly and wordlessly. The 'select shop' crowd is wired
in a completely different way than the aforemnetioned people, who always
seem to be on some kind of urgent 'Special Forces' mission. Frequenters of
select shops will dally for hours, commenting on what they hear over the store
speakers, and might just disclose all the essential details of their personal
lives as they do it-but, more importantly, they will leave their homes in search of
a real surprise. There is a palpable desire from these patrons to learn
something new, and not to succumb to a list of 'must have' music dictated to
them by a higher-up in the music consumer hierarchy.

To this end, a favorite
spot of mine in Osaka used to be the Alchemy music store, which was manned
occasionally by Masonna's lithe lord of psych violence, Maso Yamazaki. Maso
would sit nested behind a high counter in deep thought; chain smoking and
burning incense sticks as some magnum opus of freak folklore, like Father
Yod's "God and Hair," tore up the store speaker system. If a customer broke his
reverie though, he was anything but hostile-even if they were local salarymen
or other people who appeared to be the polar opposite of people involved with
"the scene." It goes without saying, watching a clone businessman in a
starched white shirt getting advice on Italian power electronics from long-haired
and electrified noise guru Maso Yamazaki is a 'Kodak moment'-and yet, select
shop bosses are wise enough not to dismiss any customer for not 'looking the
part.' The exclusivity in music selection does not extend, as it might in the U.S.,
to a 'private party' mentality: there are no Japanese indie shops where an
archly ironic clerk will mock musical neophytes into submission, gloating over
their hard-won mastery of the obscure fringes of pop culture knowledge.

Rather, Japanese select shops reward the patience that it takes to actually find
them (even with maps handy, this is not always a cut-and-dry task). The select
shops realize that they have kindred spirits in other areas of cultural production,
and collaborate with them accordingly. For example, the long-running and
venerated underground comics magazine Garo once devoted an issue to the
theme of 'sound fetishism' and did a glowing feature on Nogai's Kurara shop.
Garo has come full circle from advertising independent music, as they now sell
it in their own arts boutique called 'Tacoche.'

Select shop owners are often
given precedence over music journalists when it comes to keeping magazine
readers (and the merely curious public) informed. Time Bomb's Satoru
Higashiseto doubles as a culture writer for the Studio Voice culture magazine,
for example, and I've also seen him fielding questions for foreign students
writing their thesis papers on the Japanese noise underground. After all,
magazines-particularly Rock Magazine and Fool's Mate- once kept listeners
aware of underground music before the record store infrastructure could be
properly formed. While the latter magazine is now, sadly, the house organ for a
truly bombastic and goofy genre of rock known as 'Visual Kei,' it was once a
50/50 split between coverage of independent music and the Japanese
mainstream. No matter, though, the groundwork has been laid and the
pioneering stores such as Fujiyama (Tokyo), Les Disques du Soleil, Time
Bomb and Alchemy (all Osaka) are rarely spoken of in negative terms these
days.

Another recent development: in live performance situations which require
a DJ in between artists' sets, many of the shop owners have been chosen in
the place of card-carrying professional DJs. It is, in this writer's humble
opinion, a refreshing change just to hear a DJ at a gig who is simply a good
song selector, rather than a slick and self-aggrandizing turntable 'virtuouso.'
Kurara's Nogai has worked the intermission periods at concerts for artists in
the 'New Improvised Music From Japan' series, including Ami Yoshida's
bedroom electronics combo The California Dolls. And, of course, Yamabe Keiji
may be the first and only person in the world to have live-mixed Merzbow's postindustrial meltdowns with... er... The Baja Men's "Who Let The Dogs Out."

Experiencing the rich variety of Japanese select shops leaves me with a
burning question: why, in a stereotypically 'insular' society such as Japan, are
there 5 times as many public places to discover new music than in an officially
recognized 'metropolis of music' like Chicago? After all, Japan is a country that
has been tightening its belt since the collapse of the great 1980's 'bubble'
economy and their status as the world's #1 creditor nation. Still, the record
retail business there thrives as its Western equivalent ponders various worst-
case scenarios and develops a bunker mentality: while chains like Tower
Records have long since declared bankruptcy in the U.S., Japanese franchises
(like the glistening Tower behemoth in Shibuya) continue to reverberate with
the sound of ringing registers, with no end to their operations in sight.

It's also worth mentioning that, combined with its shrinking purses, Japan's
Internet privacy laws forbid net servers to disclose personal information about
their users-even if they are downloading vast catalogs of music for free.
Wouldn't this provide justification for just staying home and saving precious
resources of time and money? Satoru Higashiseto doesn't believe so. "I don't
think the internet has damaged my store….only the sales policy of CD's/music
has changed. However-the real underground scene happens in the small
clubs and even out on the street now." Then he adds, with a knowing wink, "it
can't be Googled on the Internet."7

One should still be cautiously optimistic about the future of these havens for
outré and rugged individualism, though. While their combined reputation has
already earned them high-profile foreign proselytizers like the Diskaholics
Anonymous Trio (a free-form supergroup composed for the express purpose of
making record-buying trips to Japan's major cities-now somewhat less
relevant since founding member Jim O'Rourke has 'gone native' in Japan),
public enthusiasm for these outlets often has to butt heads with government
regulation and the usual grim realities of the 'art' business being one of the
more expendable industries in times of economic uncertainty. In 2006, I wrote
of a draconian law which gutted the country's market for vintage electric
instruments by outlawing their sales after a seemingly unrelated incident, in
which a handful of citizens died from the fumes released by some second-hand, 20-year-old Panasonic air conditioning units. Fears that similar strong-arm tactics
may be used against record shops turning a profit on second-hand goods (this is
the vast majority of the 'select shops') are certainly justified given official orders
like this one. Talk also abounds of crippling property taxes on independent
stores, another move which could stifle or nullify new ventures into this field
(although Mr. Higashiseto assures me that the sales tax on actual records
purchased in Japanese shops is a reasonable 5%).

When all is said and
done, a sort of 'culture war' may be brewing between the rigid bureaucracy and
'hana yori dango' ethics (an oft-quoted aphorism translating to "dumplings are
better than flowers," or basic needs ahead of aesthetic concerns) of an older
generation, and the healthy skepticism of a younger generation opting out of
the "job for life" commitment to corporatism and their own start-up businesses,
among them a plethora of cafes, bars and media outlets.

The more entrenched
traditionalist elements in the country, perhaps sensing that ground is being lost
to a younger generation seeking to build a new infrastructure around their more
pluralistic cultural ideals, is a cornered animal that should not be
underestimated-their ability to shut things down in a heartbeat extends even to
more significantly 'old school' counter-culture institutions, like Tokyo's Shimo-
Kitazawa neighborhood, where the building of a massive freeway now
threatens to displace the decades-old hodge-podge of hip boutiques and
relaxed automobile-free streets. It is uncertain at this phase who will come out
on top of this particular culture war. As it steadily intensifies, it might be a good
idea to experience the inspiring eclecticism and resourcefulness of these
outlets while they still stand.